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Mathematical Expression Editor
The dot product measures how aligned two vectors are with each other.
The definition of the dot product
We have already seen how to add vectors and how to multiply vectors by
scalars.
We have not yet defined how to multiply a vector by a vector. You might think it is
reasonable to define but this operation is not especially useful, and will never be
utilized in this course.
In this section we will define a way to “multiply” two vectors called the dot
product. The dot product measures how “aligned” two vectors are with each
other.
The dot product of two vectors is given by the following.
The first thing you should notice about the the dot product is that
Compute.
Compute.
Let be nonzero vectors in . Which of the following expressions make sense?
Think about which terms/factors are vectors and which terms/factors are
scalars.
Which of the following are vectors?
The dot product allows us to write some complicated formulas more simply.
The magnitude of vector is given by
We already know that if , then but so
Compute the magnitude of the vector .
The geometry of the dot product
Let’s see if we can figure out what the dot product tells us geometrically. As an
appetizer, we give the next theorem: the Law of Cosines.
Law of Cosines Given a triangle with sides of length , , and , and with being the
measure of the angle between the sides of length and ,
we have
When what does the law of cosines say?
It is the Pythagorean theorem.It is
the law of sines.It is undefined.
We can rephrase the Law of Cosines in the language of vectors. The vectors , , and
form a triangle
so if is the angle between and we must have
Geometric Interpretation of the Dot Product For any two vectors and , where is
the angle between and .
First note that Now use the law of cosines to write
The theorem above tells us some interesting things about the angle between two
(nonzero) vectors.
If and are two nonzero vectors, and is the angle between them,
We have a special buzz-word for when the dot product is zero.
Two vectors are called orthogonal if the the dot product of these vectors is
zero.
Note: Geometrically, this means that the angle between two nonzero vectors is or .
This also means that the zero vector is orthogonal to all vectors.
From this we see that the dot product of two vectors is zero if those vectors are
orthogonal. Moreover, if the dot product is not zero, using the formula allows us to
compute the angle between these vectors via where .
Find the angle between the vectors.
Think about how hard this question would have been before you read this section!
Find all unit vectors orthogonal to both vectors and , given by
Write your vectors in the order of increasing -components.
Projections and components
Projections
One of the major uses of the dot product is to let us project one vector in
the direction of another. Conceptually, we are looking at the “shadow” of
one vector projected onto another, sort of like in the case of a sundial.
In essence we imagine the “sun” directly over a vector, casting a shadow onto another
vector.
While this is good starting point for understanding orthogonal projections, now we
need the definition.
The orthogonal projection of vector in the direction of vector is a new vector
denoted
that lies on the line containing , with the vector perpendicular to . Below we see
vectors and along with . Move the tips of vectors and to help you understand
.
Consider the vector and the vector . Compute .
Draw a picture.
Let and . Compute .
Draw a picture.
To compute the projection of one vector along another, we use the dot product.
Given two vectors and
First, note that the direction of is given by and the
magnitude of is given by
Now where has a positive sign if , and a negative sign if . Also,
Multiplying direction and magnitude we find the following.
Notice that the sign of the direction is the sign of cosine, so we simply remove the
absolute value from the cosine.
Find the projection of the vector in the direction of the vector .
Let and be nonzero vectors in . Let . Select all statements that must be true.
Components
Scalar components compute “how much” of a vector is pointing in a particular
direction.
Let and be vectors and let be the angle between them. The scalar
component in the direction of of vector is denoted
Let . Compute .
Compute .
Compute .
To compute the scalar component of a vector in the direction of another, you use the
dot product.
Given two vectors, and ,
Let and be nonzero vectors and let be the angle between them. Which of the
following are true?
Orthogonal decomposition
Given any vector in , we can always write it as for some real numbers and . Here
we’ve broken into the sum of two orthogonal vectors — in particular, vectors
parallel to and . In fact, given a vector and another vector you can always
break into a sum of two vectors, one of which is parallel to and another
that is perpendicular to . Such a sum is called an orthogonal decomposition.
Move the point around to see various orthogonal decompositions of vector .
Let and be vectors. The orthogonal decomposition of in terms of is the sum
where means that “ is parallel to ” and means that “ is perpendicular to
”.
Let and . What is the orthogonal decomposition of in terms of ?
Let and . What is the orthogonal decomposition of in terms of ?
Now we give an example where this decomposition is useful.
Consider a box weighing resting on a ramp that rises over a span of .
We know that the force of gravity is pointing straight down, but from
experience, we know this exerts some sort of diagonal force on the box, too
(things slide down ramps). This diagonal force will be described by the
orthogonal decomposition of in terms of . Find this orthogonal decomposition.
To find the force of gravity in the direction of the ramp, we compute .
To find the component of gravity orthogonal to the ramp, write with me.
The algebra of the dot product
We summarize the arithmetic and algebraic properties of the dot product below.
The
following are true for all scalars and vectors , , and in .
Commutativity:
Linear in first argument:
and
Linear in second argument:
and
Relation to magnitude:
Relation to orthogonality:
If is orthogonal to then .
Instead of defining the dot product by a formula, we could have defined it by
the properties above! While this is common practice in mathematics, the
process is a bit abstract and is perhaps beyond the scope of this course.
Nevertheless, we know that you are an intrepid young mathematician, and
we will not hold back. We will now show that there is only one formula
which gives us all of these properties, and it will be our formula for the dot
product.
The dot product is given by the following formula.
Let be the vector whose th coordinate is , with all other coordinates being . Then,
we can write and We now compute By the linearity properties of the dot product,
the above is equal to Finally, since if (because they are parallel in this case) and
otherwise (because then they are orthogonal). So, our expression becomes